


Witch's Ancestry

by Cinnameg



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gods are assholes, Multi, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 18:44:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9916019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnameg/pseuds/Cinnameg
Summary: Magic is volatile at best, sadistic at worst. That's what twenty-year-old Rowan learns from the very first moment he could chant. All covens are cursed, the witches' bodies taken over slowly by the magic they use. He's special, as is his friend Willow. They're immune to the curse. Somehow blessed by the dick gods that started the curse, they join the Immune coven and learn how to wield their magic correctly. But when the Immune become infected with the curse slowly, they have to gather a group and travel to the End of the World to right the wrongs of their ancestors and help the future. Many will die, but that's how it is.Camp NaNoWriMo novel written by me, but this is rewrite of the original bc the one I first wrote was terrible lmao. Unbeta'd and updated on Saturdays most likely.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The cast of characters:
> 
> Rowan: Mute, blood witch/necromancer  
> Willow: Rowan's best friend, green/healing witch  
> Bennett: Storm witch, specialty in lightning  
> Caspian: water witch, Hestia's brother  
> Hestia: fire witch, Caspian's sister  
> Yvonne: Immune witch protector

When it comes to magic, one has to be careful. It's volatile, unpredictable, and will turn on its user in an instant if it so pleased. The art is and will always be like the ocean, choppy and violent when angered, and clear and smooth as glass when calm. A truly skilled witch could handle magic at its best and its worst times, though it takes a toll on even the most skilled and able. You had to be careful when using the craft, always respectful and never giving or taking too much. It's balance, harmony. The witches of old didn't understand that, and grew too prideful with their magic use. Some even dared to go against the gods themselves, claiming they had more control on magic than the ones who gave the witches their power.

The pride was their downfall, the gods cursing the witches that they had such hope for, cursing them to be deformed by the magic they held in such high esteem. The witches soon became monsters, and the use of magic faded into the tales of old,nothing but the tales that children were told. This was the world that Rowan grew in, though unlike the other young witches in his coven, the stories of old grew and festered in his head and heart.

He was born unable to speak, his mother's use of magic having caused him to grow strange in her womb, the blood magic drawing on his strength instead of her own while she carried him and making his body blue when he was born. She called him terrible names, casting him out of her arms the moment Rowan was placed in them. His father caught him before the midwife, and the blood witch threw herself into the lake not a month later. His father was the one to tell him the stories, learning how to speak with his hands from one of the other mute witches in the coven, and he taught his son with the stories. Rowan also learned the art of healing from his father, though he doubted he was a healing witch like his older brother.

When his father was taken by the curse, Rowan was only thirteen, his brother twenty with a wife and a home of his own away from them. Rowan was the one who cared for him, bark growing from his skin and small twigs forming from the gaps in his skin and his orifices. Too much magic used while he taught Rowan, it soon caught up with the man, and he soon grew stationary in his bed, the plants overtaking him slowly. After three months, the man was dead, simply fertilizer for the flowers and herbs that grew from him. Rowan was forced from his home into his brother's, while their father's body and childhood home burned to the ground.

Rowan continued his life in his brother's home, an outlier even with his family, until an outbreak of sickness hit them hard, removing the rest of Rowan's family from his life months before he officially joined the coven. The first time he used magic was when he was welcomed into the coven at his sixteenth birthday, the ritual showing his magical affinity. The only bad thing was his tendency to gravitate towards blood magic, having selected the bowl of crimson liquid in his first trial and working with it as if it were a part of him. The second trial, where many show the first signs of the curse, Rowan was unfazed when he broke the neck of a small finch and sliced his palm, dripping his blood onto the body and reviving the bird in no time at all.

That was the most concerning to the elders, the show of a blood magic affinity, perhaps even a talent for necromancy. Rowan was the only one of his kind in the coven, and while he was accepted, he wasn't that popular with the other witches of his age range aside from a young green witch, Willow. She used her own potions to color her light hair, and her first words to Rowan were, "I can make your hair red to match your affinity, if you want," guaranteeing a friendship between them. The coven allowed male and female witches to live together in cabins, rooms on either side of the buildings, and the moment Rowan's cabin was constructed, he invited Willow to live with him. He taught her his hand language and she picked it up quickly, which he was thankful for.

The one thing they had in common was that neither of them were affected by the curse that plagued the coven. The older the pair got, the more the curse was shown to them, and the more Rowan found himself thinking of the stories of old. When he told Willow of these thoughts, the green witch mused her displeasure with them, but didn't think less of her best friend, simply continued him on the path of his working as her apprentice.

Besides his father, Rowan hadn't seen any others affected horribly by the curse. Willow, on the other hand, had seen more than her fair share. She tended to the elders, healing them when they needed it, and cared for them as they died slowly. Working with her, Rowan soon saw the horrors of the curse.

The oldest had been Elder Elizabeth, the old water witch having been slowly turned into the liquid she revered. She'd lost her eyes years ago, and slowly her bones had followed suit, until she was nothing but a sack on her bed. One wrong move and she'd be punctured, the water in her body from her bones transforming pouring out and never being able to be stopped. When she had died, that was exactly what happened. the water seemed from almost every hole in her body, beads coming from her skin and streams running from her eyes like tears. It took three days before her body was empty, all three of which Rowan watched.

The youngest was a witch of only six years, his body small and curled up in the infirmary cot. His skin burned like coals, cracked like volcanic rock, and every breath was painful, the intake of oxygen stoking the fire that grew and grew in his blood and belly. Too much playing with his new magic, his mother explained as she sobbed, he'd sneak away and create new friends from the magma that flowed from his fingers. She couldn't stop him then, and not when he lay in the cot, slowly dying. Rowan and Willow ended it quickly for him, the poison root taking no time to end the boy's suffering. His body crumpled to ash the moment his heart ceased beating, and the wind carried him away before the healers could even put him in a carrier for his family.

Rowan and Willow continued their work until their twentieth years, until the call of the curse caught up with one of their friends, and the elders decided it was time to send the two immune witches out on their own to where they'd be safe.

And that is where the story begins...

**Author's Note:**

> If you like my stuff, consider buying me a coffee or commission me!  
> Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/A605ECW  
> Commissions: http://terato-imagines.tumblr.com/Commissions


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